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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Can’t Concentrate…

A day or two ago I was watching a TV documentary about the human brain, and how we are a lot less capable of multi-tasking than we might think. They did experiments using magicians and film clips, and asked the test people and audience to keep count of more than one thing at the same time, or to look out for more than one thing simultaneously, and then asked them about something completely different. The amount of things, and the kind of things one misses is really incredible. (Like you’re asked to keep count of how many times two people in blue hats, among a group of dancers, step in and out of the spotlight… And afterwards they ask: Did you see the penguin? Er… what… Rewind, and sure enough, there was full size human dressed up in a penguin costume walking across the scene in the background… Unnoticed!)

Anyway… Google seems to be doing their own show of the same kind today. HOW am I going to keep in mind what it was I was going to look up, when this is what comes up on my screen:

To my credit, I did notice the ice bear! But I can’t for the life of me remember what it was I was going to google in the first place.

When I clicked the button in the middle, it got worse and turned into a game.

It can’t be April Fool’s Day yet. Can someone tell me what’s going on?

I can’t help laughing a little… But if it continues, I’m going to have to swith to another standard search engine. (Yes, Google – I’m serious!)

I have no idea any more what it was I originally intended to blog about today.

20 comments:

OK, I just found out:"Google has provided users with a new way to waste time today, thanks to an interactive homepage doodle in honor of entrepreneur Frank Zamboni. - Anyone who has spent any time at an ice-skating rink has undoubtedly laid eyes on Zamboni's most well-known invention - the Zamboni ice resurfacers. Today, in celebration of Zamboni's 112th birthday, Google's doodle lets you play Zamboni driver."Article hereI still question the little word "lets"...

This is real cute, but I can understand your absent mindedness. I know Google has things like this on special occasions. They did something similar not long ago when there was some important date about John Lennon.

I just went into Google to look, but I have my own Google page set up with everything I like. You should do the Google My Page, you can choose from many cute backgrounds, and choose what you put on it...the news, weather, health news, jokes, and so on. I love mine, and any changes do not affect it

Never saw this, either. But I am not surprised about the documentary. Police all over the world despair over the inability of witnesses to remember anything clearly, and the small bits they DO remember, are often wrong or, to say the least, inaccurate.

Meike, I've often thought that I'd make a terrible witness. I used to have a friend or acquaintance who worked as a bus driver. I don't know how many times I heard his voice say hello to me as I boarded the bus, before I noticed that it was him driving. I always had enough to do with concentrating on finding my ticket/card and placing it on the machine + checking out available seats etc.

So glad it isn't just me that can waste hours of time playing with a Google doodle. It's a good job they are only there (be default) for a single day at a time, and that the game based doodles are spread out a bit.

Thanks Mark... Especially for the word "doodle" which escaped my memory as well yesterday, and made it even harder to find the info about WHY there were little people ice-skating all over my screen... I'm not sure I've ever noticed any interactive ones before, but this machine seemed to effectively erase my memory as well as the traces after the skates!

In "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis, the goal of the journey is to explore "the Unknown Eastern Seas Beyond the Lone Islands". - Learn more by clicking on About Me at the top of the blog.